Long Beach State coach Alan Knipe and his players are two victories away from a national championship, but they’re not overconfident going into Thursday’s NCAA semifinal against Ohio State. (Photo by Scott Varley, Contributing Photographer)

LOS ANGELES — TJ DeFalco feels the mounting outside expectations of a team driving toward a national championship, but all the star outside hitter sees in the No. 1 next to Long Beach State’s name is unfinished business.

“In my opinion, being the favorite means nothing to us,” DeFalco said before top-ranked Long Beach State’s national semifinal match against Ohio State on Thursday at Pauley Pavilion. “We were favored last year (in the semifinal) and we weren’t prepared the way we are now. So it comes down to how we do and the way we prepare.”

The list of reasons why the 49ers (26-1) look ripe for their first NCAA title since 1991 grows daily. On Monday, they became the only team with three AVCA first-team All-Americans this season with DeFalco, setter Josh Tuaniga and outside hitter Kyle Ensing. On Tuesday, Coach Alan Knipe was named national coach of the year and Nick MacRae was named the national assistant coach of the year. On Wednesday, Tuaniga collected the national player of the year award for orchestrating Long Beach State’s offense, which leads the nation in hitting percentage.

But, as the 49ers learned last year, the NCAA tournament will find any reason to deny a favorite a shot at a national title.

Despite entering last year’s tournament with the top hitting percentage in the country, the 49ers hit a season-low .215 in the semifinal and got swept by lower-seeded BYU, which will face UCLA in Thursday’s second semifinal. Long Beach State has not advanced to the championship match since 2004.

“You can tell they are a very driven group and that they have something to prove and are trying to make a statement,” Ohio State head coach Pete Hanson said. “And that’s what makes teams go from good to great.”

Ohio State, which is trying to become the first team to win three straight NCAA titles since UCLA in 1981-84, has been on both sides of the expectations coin. The Buckeyes (25-5) won the 2016 championship as the gutsy underdog. They had to fight through a play-in match to even advance to the Final Four.

It was freeing, senior middle blocker Blake Leeson said, not like the pressure of being the favorite the following year with a senior-laden team. Successfully defending the championship was exciting, but lifting the trophy also felt like lifting a weight off their shoulders.

“I think everyone was more tight,” Leeson said of 2017’s team. “For me, it was more of a relief when we won more than an excited feeling.”

Neither BYU nor UCLA has won a national championship in more than a decade. The Cougars (22-6) have lost in the championship match in back-to-back years, not reaching the top since 2004. UCLA’s last title came in 2006, and the Bruins (24-7) haven’t advanced to the final since.

For a program that leads the country with 19 national titles, the 12-year drought is the longest between championships in UCLA men’s volleyball history.

“I look up at that banner and think, ‘Darn, it’s been a long time since we’ve put a number up there,’” said UCLA head coach John Speraw, who won two national titles as a player at UCLA and three more as an assistant for the Bruins. “Then I think ‘I gotta run a great practice today, I gotta run a great team meeting, I gotta plan a great game plan, I gotta communicate with my athletes, I gotta do the best I can do with what I have in front of me.’ If I do that, those numbers will come back.”

Thuc Nhi Nguyen has covered UCLA for the Southern California News Group since 2016. A proud Seattle native, she majored in journalism and mathematics at the University of Washington. She likes graphs, animated GIFs and superheroes.